Red Cross: Colombian Government Must Find 83,000 Disappeared Persons

The ICRC asked the Colombian government to implement more effective measures to prevent further disappearances.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has urged the new Colombian government to search for the over 83,000 people who disappeared in the country, in commemoration of the International Day of the Disappeared, which takes place every Aug. 30.

The head of the ICRC delegation in Colombia, Christoph Harnisch, has highlighted that “The new Government headed by Ivan Duque) must make an effort to prioritize the search for missing persons and ensure that (everything is done to ensure that the families have a response.”

The Unit for the Search of Disappeared People (UBPD) was created as part of the peace accords between the Colombian Government and the now political party Revolutionary Alternative Forces of the Commons (FARC) which was signed in 2016. Luz Marina Monzon, director of the UBPD, asserted that political will is needed because families are yet to receive any response.

“The creation of the UBPD and the ratification by the Constitutional Court of its extrajudicial and humanitarian character are in themselves positive steps, however, we expected the advances to be much faster,” Harnisch said, while addressing the over 83,000 forced disappearance cases, that took place between 1958 and 2017, during the armed conflict in Colombia.

Harnisch also highlighted the importance of having human and financial resources in order to work effectively, in the territories and with the families, in the search process.

Colombia’s newly installed right-wing government of President Ivan Duque has filed draft legislation ordering that “under no circumstances” should investigative bodies such as the Special Jurisdiction for Peace or the Truth Commission be allowed access to military intelligence.